All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Jeff Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

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No, CBS News is not re-making a famous spaghetti western. Instead, we’re launching a weekly look at the most effective, most depressing and most what-planet-are-we-on events of the political week. The judgments are non-ideological – effective and depressing and weird events happen across the political spectrum – and we don’t have a standard Olympic-style point-scoring standard for this feature.

For openers, we’ve chosen an obvious starting point: Sen. John McCain’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. We’ve seen selections in the past change a campaign for the worse ...

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The Republican convention is over, and surprisingly enough, the most dramatic part of this convention came not from the acceptance speech of the nominee, John McCain, but from his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

That has energized a reluctant evangelical Republican base, promising that in the fall they might turn out in greater numbers than thought. It has put the change issue more on the side of the Republicans than we had thought. And it has made the prospect of a female vice president a potential appeal to former Clinton supporters.

However, the historical markers still favor the Democrats. People identify themselves as Democrats more than Republicans by 10 points. But, the outcome of this election is still as hard to predict as any.

Just click on the monitor to hear the rest of Jeff Greenfield's thoughts on the convention.

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Jeff Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

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As a lifelong New Yorker, I’ve taken for granted many of the iconic symbols of my town: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and Central Park are each part of my extended neighborhood, and rarely stir the emotions.

But for nearly 60 years, every time I’ve walked into Yankee Stadium, my heartbeat begins to increase.

It happened the first time I went to a ballgame there, walking into the huge fortress, emerging from a tunnel into the startling blue sky and green outfield – having only seen baseball on a mid-century TV, I guess I assumed the real thing would be black and white. More than the physical power, it’s the power of memories that the stadium holds that make its last season so poignant.

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In this week's Political Pulse, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric and senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield consider former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's bombshell new book - and the media's reaction to it.

So, for your enjoyment, Political Pulse with Katie Couric and Jeff Greenfield.

So, take a listen!

(CBS)

In this week's Political Pulse, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric and senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield look at the short list of choices for vice president that both parties are considering.

So, for your enjoyment, Political Pulse with Katie Couric and Jeff Greenfield.

So, take a listen and let us know what you think! And remember to check back for our next Political Pulse.

Jeff Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

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1.The Democrats and Republicans have two completely different caucus systems.

The GOP takes a straight straw poll — secret ballot with one person, one vote. Whoever gets the most votes win. Simple. Democrats do it differently: Participants form "Presidential preference groups" by moving to different parts of the room. There is no secret ballot (which for some of us suggests that pressure and intimidation might just occur every once in while). The candidates who can't garner 15 percent are considered "non-viable" and their supporters either go home or may realign with more successful candidates. So the second choice of caucus-goers can prove decisive.

Democrats don't use the one-person-one-vote system. Each of the 1,781 precincts gets a certain amount of clout, depending on how big the Democratic turnout was in the last Presidential and gubernatorial contests. So if, for instance, Sen. Clinton turned out huge numbers in Cedar Rapids, it wouldn't be truly measured by the Democratic system — she'd get the same percentage of delegates whether 200 or 2000 people participated. In other words, it's very possible that the candidate who turned out the biggest number of participants statewide could lose — if an opponent's strength was spread more widely.

2. Turnout is really low compared to turnout in primaries.

If the caucuses produce an all-time high of, say, 250,000, that would still equal little more than 10 percent of eligible voters.

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The countdown to the Iowa caucuses is making a lot of headlines — but who actually knows the complex inner-workings of a caucus?

Our Jeff Greenfield does. Click on the monitor at left for an early peek at his explainer piece tonight.

Jeff Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

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So the reviews are in and the consensus is: Hillary had a bad night; maybe a bad, bad night. And the question is: so what?

Can a shaky debate performance really matter to a candidate who dominates the national polls, who leads (narrowly) in Iowa and South Carolina, and humongously everywhere else; a candidate who just picked up the endorsement of AFSCME, one of the biggest public employee unions in the country?

Well, yeah ... maybe. And here's why. When Sen. Clinton followed her effusive praise of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to give illegal immigrants drivers' licenses with a refusal to back that idea, a single thought flashed through the minds of a thousand political junkies: "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

That remark by John Kerry, immortalized in late-night comedy monologues and a devastating Bush-Cheney TV ad, encapsulated the view of Kerry as a flip-flopper, a waffler, someone who couldn't be trusted to be clear and steadfast about where he stood.

Clinton so far has dodged that bullet, despite her effort to follow a "general election" strategy through the primaries — that is, to talk in a way that could appeal to independents and moderate Republicans even as she fights for the Democratic nomination. Thus, her tough talk on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, her refusal to say anything about Social Security other than that we need fiscal responsibility and bi-partisanship (how about apple pie while we're at it?).

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Jeff Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

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April in Paris? Everyone's romantic dream. Autumn in New York? The best time of all in the Big Apple. Christmas in Killarney? Yes, 'tis grand to be Irish at holiday time.

Now how about … New Year's in Des Moines?

No, it's not a well-known song, it's where the Republican presidential candidates — and the army of operatives, organizers, and media types — will be spending their holiday season now that the Iowa Republican Party has decided to shift its first in the nation caucus date from January 14 to January 3. So, with the New Year's hangover still banging in our heads, and with the college football marathon only starting to wind down, Iowa Republicans will be gathering in school cafeterias, libraries, living rooms, and gyms to start the process of picking the next president.

Why? Because Michigan, long frustrated at politicking in the shadow of Iowa and New Hampshire, effectively decided "to hell with the national party rules" and moved its primary all the way from February 26 to January 15 — a day after the scheduled Iowa caucuses. Since Iowa has a law requiring its caucuses to be at least a week earlier than anyone else's process, which forced a change … sort of.

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Jeff Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

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There's an almost compulsory list of items to tick off when you talk about Fred Thompson's now-certain Presidential campaign:

- Watergate lawyer asking the "smoking gun" question to Alexander Butterfield about a taping system inside the White House...check.

- Actor who played roles ranging from White House chief of Staff to President of the United States to pro-life conservative Manhattan DA Arthur Branch on "Law and Order"...check.

- Won a Senate seat in 1994 campaigning in a red pickup tuck to symbolize just-plain-folks roots...check.

- Married a much-younger, attractive woman whose credentials as a veteran political staff person get blithely ignored...check.

But here's the part about Thompson's campaign that really intrigues me. It just could be that he intends to run a very different kind of campaign--stylistically and substantively...

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